Dr. Stanley Goldstein - Author and Psychologist

Several years ago The Wall Street Journal published an article by a financial columnist on how to discipline children, using his experience with his teenage son as an example.

Basically, his advice was to take away something which the child likes but not something which would impact their future ( Read More 

It is both clinically and logically incorrect to diagnose a child or teenager as suffering from Bipolar Disorder since this diagnosis is classified as a personality disorder and requires an adult mental structure which youth, by definition, do not possess.

Parents and others often consider adolescence to normally be a period of strife. They believe that all teenagers have personal difficulties and will behave in odd, inexplicable ways but this is false.

The normal teenager has no greater difficulty coping with the tasks of adolescence than they did with the demands of earlier developmental periods. Then it  Read More 

The problem with holding ‪teachers‬ largely responsible for their ‪student‬s' learning is that many learning difficulties derive from emotional and family issues that are uncontrolled by the teacher. Teachers teach--with greater or lesser knowledge and creativity--and can be a catalyst for a child's learning but they do not control most elements of a  Read More 

While no one can dispute the value of most education, the cheapest and most effective early intervention “program” would be for parents to read to their children from 2 years of age onward, and to speak with rather than to them (as by explaining why something should be done rather than merely saying, “do it  Read More 

While psychotherapy remains the best hope for those who experienced emotionally destructive childhoods it is not the only avenue toward health. Artists often use their creative ability to express their conflicts and relieve their feelings. The writer's block, of which so many writers complain, can indicate the presence of a creative blockage caused by  Read More 

On a bulletin board on Amazon.com, a mother spoke of her distress at the excessive video game play by her teenager. This was his major interest and interfered with his school performance and family life. So intense was his involvement with these games that he would become enraged when his parents attempted  Read More 

It's a popular belief that Americans always cared about the welfare of their children but this is not true. The New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children was established in 1874 after the widespread publicity given to a horrendous case, that of a ten year old Mary Ellen.

She had been severely  Read More 

Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) symptoms are identical to those of anxiety and depression and have a long history, having been asserted to "mental restlessness" in the eighteenth century and Minimal Brain Dysfunction (MBD) in the early twentieth century. These terms are descriptions of behavior, and to believe that they  Read More 

Schools are often blamed for their students' downward economic mobility based on the conclusion that had the children learned more they would, in adulthood, be employed at skilled, higher paid jobs. But even in the least effective school, some children do excel. As I once described a school system  Read More